Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

It's also a big topic of conversation at the dinners I have to sit through with money-grubbing shitfaced sociopathic CEOs.

It's called retrocharging.

It works on the same model as MMORPG's and DLC except it's more insidious: The company threatens to take away something you already have unless you pay them more money.

Comcast does this. They are now doing "account audits" after which they send you a letter telling you they're going to start charging for features they claim you have always had but haven't been paying for.

Another problem is that response goes way down when you get close to the bezel.
I have a touchscreen monitor that uses this technology that I can't use with Windows because I can't drag in from the screen edges.

Microsoft has intentionally made their mobile devices expire after a few years.

They have done it with every iteration of their mobile platform from Windows CE all the way to Windows Phone.

It works like this:

1. Buy our new mobile device! It's amazing! It does everything and we'll support it forever and ever, we promise! It's okay, go ahead and put all of your contacts and data on our devices. What could possibly go wrong?

2. New generation of our mobile platform is out! Buy our mobile devices! It's amazing! Oh and also we're dropping support for existing devices tomorrow and closing the app store. You will never receive another software update and your old device is now a brick. But new platform!

They did this with Windows CE, Windows Mobile 1 through 6 and they'll do it with Windows Phone.

They even had a phone that was entirely cloud based in Europe and when they shuttered the cloud service the device literally refused to boot.